"Two of them gone now," he said. "I wonder if that is what the other fellow wanted."
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE WILDERNESS
Dusk was closing down on the valley, and the rain had ceased, when Alton unstrapped his load, and stood with aching shoulders amidst the dripping pines. He could hear the rattle of the twigs that met and brushed through the shrill wailing of the wind about the sombre spires that pierced the growing darkness far above him, and the harmonic murmuring that rose and fell in cadence along the dim, vaulted roof. There was, however, nothing else beyond the growl of a rapid somewhere up the valley, and stretching out his arms wearily, he stooped with a little smile that was grim rather than mirthful and caught up the axe.
Now one can usually hear the thudding of the axe a mile or more in the stillness of the woods that is not silence to the bushman's ear. Their voice is always musical, and the sounds that man makes jar through its harmonies, but only a forest rancher or free prospector would have caught the muffled sound, that was lost in the song of the pines a few score yards from Alton's camp. He knew where to find the resinous knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood still and listened again before he went down to the river with the kettle. Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a moment behind a wide-girthed trunk. It was only a deer he heard moving along the hillside above him, and there was nothing visible but the row of stupendous columns that appeared and vanished as the red light rose and sank. Alton set the kettle down amidst the flame, and unrolling one of the packages laid out his supper.
It was prepared and eaten in twenty minutes, and refilling the kettle for breakfast he lay smoking in a hollow between the great roots which crawled away from a cedar-trunk. Nothing moved in the bush now but a bear that was grubbing amidst the wild cabbage in a swamp, and the weary man, stretching out his hand instinctively to touch the rifle that lay within his reach, gave himself up to thought. He had also much to occupy him, and being a somewhat systematic person he proceeded to consider the questions that demanded an answer in what appeared to him their order of importance. It was characteristic that in face of recent events he placed the probable whereabouts of the silver first.
This was at the first glance a somewhat difficult problem. In front of him lay the wilderness, a trackless chaos of forest and rock and snow wherein he had to find the scar made by a stick of giant powder or the scratching of the shovel. There were, however, points to guide the searcher, and Alton could deduce a good deal from each of them. Jimmy the prospector had, it was evident, perished of hunger and exhaustion, for Alton had traced the last stages of his journey backwards through the snow, and the grim story of human endurance and anguish was plainly legible. Here Jimmy had fallen, there lain still, and then dragged himself forward before he rose again, while the uneven footsteps had borne their own testimony. Also the bag of specimens was heavy, and Alton decided that for a man in the last stages of exhaustion, the river had furnished the only road. The silver was therefore somewhere up the Valley, and as it was winter when Jimmy found it, it would lie low down where the snow was cut off by the pines. Alton lay still a minute with a curious glint in his eyes when the firelight touched them which was a tribute to the dead man, and then filled his pipe again.
His journey had been marked by petty misfortunes, each of which might become a more serious one, hitherto, and he was now alone. This might be due to coincidence, but Alton, admitting that hypothesis, proceeded to consider an alternative one which resolved itself into two. It was generally known in Somasco that he and Jimmy had held the clue to a secret that might be valuable, and strange prospectors for timber rights and minerals occasionally strayed into the valley. Alton knew that most of the bushmen and free prospectors had a standard of honour which was somewhat higher than that usually lived up to in the cities. They were quiet, fearless, free-handed men, the antitype of the roystering desperadoes he had now and then seen them depicted as by those who did not know them. There were, he, however, knew, among them a few who it was probable had their own reasons for vacating the great Republic, and these were men of distinctly different calibre. One or more of them, it seemed, might have heard of his aspirations and be following him. If so, it was evident that he would be in security until he found the silver. Then the peril would begin.
This led to the second issue. Alton was quite aware that he had an enemy whom he had got the better of on several occasions hitherto. Partly because devious finesse is not always superior to shrewd sense and fearless honesty, he had as yet held his own against Hallam of the Tyee. Both knew that a time of prosperity was approaching for Somasco, and had decided more or less correctly that it would lead to affluence the man who had control of the valley; but while Alton had striven with arduous toil to bring about this consummation, Hallam of the Tyee was waiting while those he meant to plunder worked for him. It was also plain that there was no room for two leaders with divergent aspirations, and the rancher had seen sufficient of his opponent's dealings to recognize that he would not scruple about any measures which promised to rid him of a rival. Therefore it became him to be careful, and once more his fingers fell upon the rifle.
Alton had reached the limit of his surmises, and refilling his pipe again abandoned himself to more pleasant dreams. He heard the whistle of the locomotive ringing among the pines, and the hum of the great mills that would grind out wealth for Somasco. Then while the pungent smoke curled about him visions materialized out of its filmy wreaths, and he saw the lake at Carnaby shining amidst the woodlands of peaceful England, and the old grey hall. In place of the sting of the resin he could smell the English roses, and when the next acrid wisp slid past him it seemed to change its form, and there grew out of it the gracious, alluring shape of a woman. Costly fabrics floated about her, there was a flash of diamonds in the red-gold hair, a face that lost its patrician serenity as it smiled, and for a setting the glitter of light and silver in the great hall at Carnaby. Alton, whose eyes were growing dim, stretched out his arms towards the darkness, and a chilling gust swept the smoke aside, while great drops of water fell splashing upon him. He was back once more in the wilderness, a wet and very weary man, with thorn-rents in his deerskin jacket and the mire clinging about him, but he smiled as he rose stiffly and stretched his aching limbs.